The Seven Sapphires of Mardi Gras Read Free Page B

groggy with sleep.
    Three old men, probably veterans, swapped war stories and smoke in the far corner. I moved tentatively toward the two remaining passengers, a pair of elderly ladies dressed in their finest silks and satins.
    “Do join us” invited the first, her brown eyes bright with curiosity as I seated myself beside her.
    “What is your name, dear?” asked the second.
    “Louise. Louise Moreland,” I answered, glancing over to meet another set of probing brown eyes, this pair rimmed with silver spectacles.
    The two must be sisters, I observed, taking note of the resemblance between them—the shiny button eyes, the iron-gray curls peeking out from under sprigged bonnets, the slightly hooked noses. If the one wasn’t wearing spectacles, I would have had difficulty telling them apart.
    Tm Mattie, and this is Madeline,” the woman with the glasses leaned across the other woman’s seat to explain. “We’ve been to New Orleans, visiting the cemetery. Our beloved parents are buried there. We’re sisters, you see.”
    So I had been correct. I remembered Mrs. Harrington’s mention of All Saint’s Day. A time when decent people remembered the dead with flowers and tears.
    “We’re on our way back to Lafitte,” the first lady, the one with the softer voice, volunteered. “Next stop, thank heavens.”
    I felt a slight sense of disappointment. I was hoping that they, too, were going to Iberville.
    “And you?”
    A strange silence filled the air as I told them of my destination.
    “Have you ever been to Iberville?” I asked, curious about their unexpected reaction.
    “Oh, of course!” The reflection of the river glinted off Mattie’s round glasses. She pursed her lips in a way that reminded me of Mrs. Harrington. “But not often. Desolate little place, if you ask me. Swampland. May I ask what takes you there?”
    “My relatives. An uncle, Edward Dereux, and his wife and child live there.” As I spoke, I felt the anxiousness flutter in my heart. My mother’s family!
    My mother had often and always lovingly spoken of her dear brother Edward, her life before the war, and the lovely plantation of Evangeline.
    “Have you heard of a place called Evangeline?”
    Both ladies shook their heads. I wasn’t surprised. The house would be little more than an empty shell now. Edward had warned me that, except for Grandfather’s one futile attempt to restore it, the old family place had lain empty since the war.
    But that would soon change. Though I had not told Edward of my plans, I intended to restore the old family home and live there. To live in the house that my mother had loved so much had become my dream, my obsession. It had been my one ray of hope, the dream that had kept me sane and filled the empty void that had been my life since Mother’s death.
    Ever since I was a child, we had planned to make the journey together. “Someday Grandfather will forgive us,” Mother had insisted so many times. “Hell realize the war is over. And then he’ll send for us.” Sighing, my pretty mother, with her sad dark eyes and thick coppery hair, would try to explain. “After all, Louise, I knew in my heart that I would lose my family when I chose to marry Jeff. It was a choice that I never regretted, though we had so little time together.” My father, a Yankee soldier, had been killed in the battle of Bull Run shortly after he had taken my mother away from Evangeline.
    Even fifteen years later, on her deathbed, she had not abandoned her stubborn hope. “I always believed that Father would relent—not so much for my sake, but for yours. I wanted so much to take you there, Louise. You would have loved Evangeline—its oak and marble, its elegant rooms, the gardens of wisteria and rose vine. It is our destiny, Louise. Though we may be stranded here in St. Louis, Evangeline is where we belong.”
    Fearing for my mother’s condition, I had penned a letter to her father—my grandfather. Unlike the others, this one had